What future skills do PR practitioners need?

How does your team measure up when it comes to having the required skills now and for the future? Do you know what’s needed and where the gaps are? What steps do you want to take to develop professionally?

I am part of the social media panel of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and as part of this voluntary role, I’m leading a workstream looking at the future skills PR practitioners need.

In order to be a truly relevant piece of work, it makes sense to involve the wider PR community and this is where you come in. We have already sought feedback from Chairs of the various CIPR sector groups.

The plan is to produce content that can be shared in a variety of formats such as SlideShare, infographic and document for PR practitioners to have to hand to help them chart where they are and where they want to be. We’re planning for the final product/s to be published in the Autumn.

This piece of work is intended to highlight a competency framework and the steps to get from A to B – a roadmap if you will. It will describe PR roles and the skills needed for them, plus training and development resources.

What happens next?

We’re gathering evidence and understanding what already exists and drawing on information from our experience, networks, training programmes and syllabuses such as the CIPR Advanced Certificate, Foundation Award and Diploma.

If you know of a document, piece of work or similar roadmap that you think would be beneficial for the team to consider, do please contact us via email: social@cipr.co.uk, marking it as information for the ‘Future Practitioner’ project.

Keep an eye on my blog and Twitter #CIPRsm over the next few months for progress reports and details of how you can get involved.

Your feedback and input will help ensure that the end result is something that can be adopted and adapted for use by PR professionals to help us all continuously develop our careers. If you have any ideas, feedback or suggestions, do please get in touch via the email above or Tweet me @allthingsIC. Thank you, Rachel.